David Foster Wallace and Ernest Hemingway are two American writers. Even though they come from different generations, both men argue about the same subject, abortion, which is controversial during their time. While both of their short stories using a third person narrative, Wallace portrays his characters’ actions and behaviours by making readers experience their thoughts in “Good People” while Hemingway portray his characters by allowing readers to observe them from the outside in “Hills Like White Elephants”. Firstly, their different writing styles can help the reader to either understand the characters relationship quickly or slowly. Next, it would seem that the involvement of reader to understand the characters in “Good People” is greater than in “Hills Like White Elephants”. Based on these two short stories, Wallace introduces his idea through the minds of his characters, which is Lane and Sheri. Yet Hemingway uses a documentary style such as dialogue in order to express the idea of abortion. The differences in their writing can make the reader either to understand their stories and their characters …show more content…
Wallace portrays the complexity of Lane’s mind which make the reader to experience an emotional roller coaster and understand better about what he is going through with Sheri. The reader will feel as if they are inside Lane’s head. The representation of his guilt and hard decision pushes the reader to have sympathy on his decision with Sheri. For example, the heavy uses of symbolism such as “the tree’s cloud of branches all half in the water” add more depth to the story and give significances of their relationship (Wallace 216). Because of the abundance of symbolism in “Good People”, it gives the reader the overall colour of the story, which it has dark and heavy feel when the reader read the